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Our Doors Are Always Open by Brian Lewis - Short, Horror - Louie, an aimless street-punk, seeks refuge from the rain in a mysterious church. Unfortunately, God has little to do with this house of worship. 7 pages - pdf, format
i liked it, dude. I like how you end it w/ Saul pulling up in front of the same church, and me knowing that he's in for a world of shit.
Some thoughts for your consideration:
since charlotte od's on pills, maybe have the pill bottle fall out of louise's backpack onto the floor -- setting up/ foreshadowing what's to come when he "wakes up." Also, maybe have louise talk to us/himself a little more before the action starts... one spot could be when he's washing himself off in the holy water. That would help break up some of the (although small) blocks of descriptions/action lines. Another note would be, Louie says he would rather sleep in the rain, but is that because of the overpowering stench wafting around him? Or is it because his Discman isn't working? I assume it's because of the smell, so you might-could reiterate that by using a (re:stench) before his dl. I was a little confused when you wrote "each swipe takes bigger and bigger chunks..." I think I know what you mean by swipe, but it's just a weird word choice to me, opposed to something like slash. When I think of the word "swipe", i think of swiping a credit card. MAybe that's what you mean, as the tornado of glass swirls around her, the broken shards of glass swipes at her body taking bigger and bigger...?
My biggest hang up would be this: Louise goes from apologizing to Charlotte to calling her a stupid bitch, very quickly -- and he says (before that) "what now Charlotte?" But how does he know Charlotte's behind what's going on at this point? The reason is prolly there, so i'll just assume that i missed the connection, but did want to point that out to you.
Brian, this is pretty good. Pretty intense, and pretty crazy, actually.
Some issues you need to pay attention to, as yuo seem to make these same mistakes in your scripts.
Keep your passages contained to a single thought, shot, action, or description. If the subject or POV changes, you need to start a new passage.
Keep your characters' names 100% constant in your prose. Characters can call them as many different names as they want, but one you intro them as whatever you choose, don't change this.
Mr. Breakfast, I almost had Louie crush up a pill and snort it off the pew, but decided against it because I was trying to rush into the meat of the story. I agree, I think something like that would have paid off with the reveal in the third act.
Eldave, hahahaha, yeah Aisle would have worked WAAAAAAY better. Sometimes my brain completely forgets certain words. Agreed about the mini slug.
Dreamscale, glad you liked it! Yeah, I definitely let my passages run wild sometimes. It's weird that when I read other's work I have no issue with single sentence passages, but when I do it myself I always feel inclined to expand too much, which often leads to mishmash of character POVs.
Thanks guys! Let me know if you have anything you want me to take a look at.
This was cool, good descriptions, lots of entertaining action.
I agree about the 'stupid bitch' comment at the end. It stuck out for me.
SPOILER
At the risk of sounding stupid, is he dead now. He's in some kind of purgatory now, with her? Did she o.d., die, then he died? Or is he still alive. I'm a little lost on that one...it's me cause everyone else gets it lol, but I really would like to know.....
"Turn that off, our friend has just been killed in a fatal sunlight accident!"....
The "stupid bitch" comment was me trying to show that Louie, while apologetic for Charlotte's death, is still at his center only concerned for himself. Kind of my attempt to show that his story arc is less of an arc and more of a circle.
I didn't necessarily see the character's as dead and in purgatory, more like the church is a crack of supernatural vengeance where occasionally evil people slip into and are punished. Ultimately, I wanted to leave it ambiguous for the reader to decide.
DDF, talking about Horror...I don't follow this genre, however, I think that the script is brilliant. A little polishing (slugs, names) and it's ready for production. It would make a really scaring short. Good luck with this. Fausto
Thanks so much for taking the time to read my script and the compliment! Yes, this is very much a first draft. Hopefully my revisions will make this work a bit tighter.
Also, for the life of me, I can't figure out what DDF means.
This has some pretty great visuals Brian. Some real nasty stuff here. Would be crazy on screen.
Unfortunately, besides the excellent visuals, this just didn't do much for me. Not bad, just not a whole lot of depth to it. Guy enters church, his dead girlfriend shows up and shit gets weird(in a very gory way), then he wakes up and the weirdness continues. Then we have a tacked on ending that more or less hints that this new character will have a similar fate to Louie.
I do love your writing style though. Very easy to visualize what is going on. For an exercise in pure macabre story telling, this is pretty good.
Also, I'm not a fan of most of the dialog. Probably just me, though.
I definitely get your criticism regarding the character development and story depth. This was a big exercise for me attempting to write a mostly visual film. I wanted it to kind of echo Hellraiser or Jacob's Ladder.
Yeah, I struggle with dialogue more than anything else. It's always such a precarious balancing act for me to write believable conversations while also trying to advance the plot.